Mars Needs Moms is a 2011 Image Movers film distributed by Disney based on the storybook by Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed and produced by Robert Zemeckis. It focuses on young suburban kid Milo, who late one night discovers his mother has been abducted by Martians in an attempt to use her skills in parenting to raise their own young. After accidentally hitching a ride on their craft, he lands on the red planet and meets up with another human, an 80's era Manchild who has gone a bit crazy after being brought to Mars in the same way as Milo. Together with a rebellious young Martian girl they attempt to save Milo's mother from her captors.

The film peformed very poorly at the box office leading to a loss of 135 million dollars on the production; it once held the record for biggest box office flop until 47 Ronin surpassed it. The film was also generally disliked by critics for what is considered lack of nature and sentiment, though they did take note of the good visuals and acting.

This film provides examples of:

Batman Can Breathe in Space: Averted, sort of. The characters can't breathe in space, but are able to survive much longer in the vacuum than a real person would. They also wear domes over their faces but no other protective equipment without any ill effects. Borderline Truth in Television, at least compared to traditional "explosive decompression, as in your body explodes" Hollywood fare.

Big Damn Heroes: The male Martians jumping out of the trash chute to take on the SIS.

Bring My Brown Pants: Gribble: "When you're gonna shoot a laser at someone, you should bring them a change of underwear!"

Chekhov's Gun: A literal one. Also Gribble's helmet that we see him drop on the Martian surface in his flashback, is found, still functional, and used to save Milo's mom who gave up her helmet to save Milo, whose helmet had shattered earlier when he tripped.

Jive Turkey: The Martian girl Milo meets shows elements of this when trying to talk in his language. Though to be fair, Ki learned her English from watching early 1970's television and speaks more like a stereotypical hippie.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Ki seems to channel this towards the entire Martian society. After sneaking around in the past and seeing a broadcast from an early 1970's TV show, she feels compelled to make vibrant, colorful, psychedelic graffiti tags all over the monotone blue/green station.

Mars Needs Women: Pretty much obvious from the title. The Martians need them because they're too busy to raise their own children, hence the need to copy the child-raising abilities of a human mom onto an army of nanny-bots.

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